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Alfred Molon wrote:
[]
> Good news for all photographers who have to backup Gigabytes and
> Gigabytes of images

I'm considering whether I really want wallets and wallets of DVDs for
backup - DVDs which may not be readable in a few years time. Instead, I'm
thinking of a couple of portable 250GB 2.5-inch HDs......

In article <mRJfj.72807$>, david--this-bit.nor-this-bit.co.uk says...
> I'm considering whether I really want wallets and wallets of DVDs for
> backup - DVDs which may not be readable in a few years time. Instead, I'm
> thinking of a couple of portable 250GB 2.5-inch HDs......

A highly risky approach. One head crash and you lose everything.

Besides it's sufficient if DVDs last until the next generation of media
becomes available. You then just need to copy all your disks to the next
media generation.
--

In article <1199532306.114264@athprx04>, says...
> Gave up on optical media when 500GB hard disks dropped to 100EURO or less.
> Now I back up nearly instantly to removable drives.
> If you install a RAID array, it's even simpler.

But they are by far not as safe as DVD-Rs. I use a RAID array and in
addition keep backup copies on DVDs.
--

In article <>,
Alfred Molon <> wrote:
> http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html
>
> Warner chose to support only the higher capacity Blue Ray format (50GB
> per disk for Blue Ray vs. 30GB per disk for HD DVD).
>
> This could mean the death of the lower capacity HD DVD format and lower
> costs for Blue Ray disks due to their mass use (economies of scale).
>
> Good news for all photographers who have to backup Gigabytes and
> Gigabytes of images

Hmm. You might be right, but considering that HD DVD has some powerful
supporters, don't knock it out yet. I also am not sure optical disks
would make good backup media only because writing to them would be a
heck of a lot slower than mechanical disk drives or solid state devices.

Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <mRJfj.72807$>, david-
> -this-bit.nor-this-bit.co.uk says...
>
>> I'm considering whether I really want wallets and wallets of DVDs for
>> backup - DVDs which may not be readable in a few years time.
>> Instead, I'm thinking of a couple of portable 250GB 2.5-inch
>> HDs......
>
> A highly risky approach. One head crash and you lose everything.

Er, no. (a) it's a backup and the originals may still be available (I
tend to keep all my processed stuff on disk, but not the unprocessed
"master"), and (b) the whole point of the two HDs is in case one fails
(portable to that one can be kept off-site).
> Besides it's sufficient if DVDs last until the next generation of
> media becomes available. You then just need to copy all your disks to
> the next media generation.

... and I think I would prefer to copy one 250GB disk to the next 2TB (or
whatever) rather than have to copy 60 DVDs.

"Shawn Hirn" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Hmm. You might be right, but considering that HD DVD has some powerful
> supporters, don't knock it out yet. I also am not sure optical disks
> would make good backup media only because writing to them would be a
> heck of a lot slower than mechanical disk drives or solid state devices.

I too assumed that the recent announcement that Warner had chosen BluRay
might mean the end of HD-DVD, but an article today says that consumers have
bought about 60% more HD-DVD machines than BluRay (something like 500,000+
to 300,000+). One of the reasons for those numbers may be that WalMart
sells HD-DVD machines exclusively.

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Alfred Molon
<>], who wrote in article <>:
> http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html
>
> Warner chose to support only the higher capacity Blue Ray format (50GB
> per disk for Blue Ray vs. 30GB per disk for HD DVD).
>
> This could mean the death of the lower capacity HD DVD format and lower
> costs for Blue Ray disks due to their mass use (economies of scale).
>
> Good news for all photographers who have to backup Gigabytes and
> Gigabytes of images

In fact, this MIGHT be a very bad news to (smarter? ;-) consumers.

I happened to investigate the difference between two formats last
week; ignoring the size difference (which may come and go due to
possibility of multi-layer variants), the MAJOR difference between the
formats is the encryption.

Apparently, Blu-ray MANDATES the AACS encryption. To add AACS, you
need to set up an account with AACS (about $3K - $10K, depending on
nobody knows what), and, after this, pay AACS about $1500 for each
master disk. Currently, the state of debugging is that you need about
3 "try" masters before you get a satisfactory result. This gives the
minimum overhead price of AACS of $9K or more.

This is nothing for major releases; thus people who see HD contents
only via major movies, this overhead does not matter at all. But for
"independent" video producers, this makes releasing Blu-ray
prohibitive. Thus, a Blu-ray-only world would be skewed much more to
the side of big corporations.

[Today, to release a few thousand run costs about $3.5 per HD disk,
and $7 per disk on Blu-ray; AFAIK, this difference is due NOT to the
technical matters, but entirely to AACS fees (it is with a producer
who takes video content, and returns already printed stuff). It
won't go down due to volume economy. The printing price is
practically the same - both per layer, or per gigabyte...]

Hope this helps,
Ilya

P.S. I could not find out on which step the AACS-requirement is
enforced. Is it the player, the Sony printing facilities, or
ALL printint facilities? If somebody knows, please answer...

Guest

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 22:55:33 +0100, in rec.photo.digital Alfred Molon
<> wrote:
>In article <ThOfj.72964$>, david-
>-this-bit.nor-this-bit.co.uk says...
>
>> .. and I think I would prefer to copy one 250GB disk to the next 2TB (or
>> whatever) rather than have to copy 60 DVDs.
>
>You can still do that. But you should keep backups on DVD just in case.

I gave up on that a while ago. I prefer to use two usb drives which I
rotate, keeping one in my desk at work. Prior to this I kept DVDs at work.
But given how inexpensive these disks are these days and how much quicker
they are than burning DVDs, it's not a hard choice to make.

In article <>, <>
wrote:
> I gave up on that a while ago. I prefer to use two usb drives which I
> rotate, keeping one in my desk at work. Prior to this I kept DVDs at work.
> But given how inexpensive these disks are these days and how much quicker
> they are than burning DVDs, it's not a hard choice to make.

i used to do the cd/dvd route too. what a royal pain in the butt that
was.

now, i have all my images on a single drive (backed up of course) and
any image is easily accessible at any time, even when i travel. that
would be impossible with dvds.

"Alfred Molon" <> wrote in message
news:...
> http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html
>
> Warner chose to support only the higher capacity Blue Ray format (50GB
> per disk for Blue Ray vs. 30GB per disk for HD DVD).
>
> This could mean the death of the lower capacity HD DVD format and lower
> costs for Blue Ray disks due to their mass use (economies of scale).
>

Of course on the downside for Blue Ray is that Sony is on their side. How
can one argue with a company whose line of "successes" include:
1) Betamax
2) MD
3) 8mm video
4) Hi-8 video
5) Digital-8 video
6) Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro
7) SACD
8) Li-Ion batteries used in Dell and other PCs (you remember, that enormous
recall...)
I've probably even missed some!
>
> Good news for all photographers who have to backup Gigabytes and
> Gigabytes of images
> --
>
> Alfred Molon
> ------------------------------
> Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
> http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <ThOfj.72964$>, david-
> -this-bit.nor-this-bit.co.uk says...
>
>> .. and I think I would prefer to copy one 250GB disk to the next 2TB
>> (or whatever) rather than have to copy 60 DVDs.
>
> You can still do that. But you should keep backups on DVD just in
> case.

I do agree with you, but then I ask, why? What is to say that a
cheap-and-nasty DVD-R (the sort you can buy in the local shops) written on
the cheapest DVD writer (the sort fitted to most PCs), is going to be more
reliable?

I'm proposing that my processed photos will be on 4 HDs, two 3.5-inch
"live" disks, and two 2.5-inch portable backup HDs, one kept off-site.

In article <wi%fj.73232$>, david--this-bit.nor-this-bit.co.uk says...
> I do agree with you, but then I ask, why? What is to say that a
> cheap-and-nasty DVD-R (the sort you can buy in the local shops) written on
> the cheapest DVD writer (the sort fitted to most PCs), is going to be more
> reliable?

Obviously you would use quality DVDs, wouldn't you? As for the writers
they seem to cost all the same. In any case, so far I have experienced
perhaps 1-2% bad DVDs which could not be read anymore and to be on the
safe side I burn two copies of each DVD (and I also have a HD backup,
see below).
> I'm proposing that my processed photos will be on 4 HDs, two 3.5-inch
> "live" disks, and two 2.5-inch portable backup HDs, one kept off-site.

I burn each file on two DVDs and keep a copy on a RAID array. I also
keep an additional copy on an external hard disk. I use the DVDs in case
something is wrong with the hard disks. In any case, at the moment I
have a huge and growing stack of DVDs, which is why a disk which has the
capacity of 11 DVDs sounds so appealing. Would reduce my DVD stack size
by a factor 11.
--

Alfred Molon wrote:
> http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html
>
> Warner chose to support only the higher capacity Blue Ray format (50GB
> per disk for Blue Ray vs. 30GB per disk for HD DVD).
>
> This could mean the death of the lower capacity HD DVD format and lower
> costs for Blue Ray disks due to their mass use (economies of scale).
>
> Good news for all photographers who have to backup Gigabytes and
> Gigabytes of images

Well, it will sell more players...
I am still not convinced that optical media is reliable enough for my
backups.
I have rented entirely too many unplayable DVDs.

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